8000 public service jobs lost in a year

Phillip Thomson

Almost 8000 positions have been shed from the federal public service in the past year, an average of more than 20 a day.

The Abbott government has used the data to show that more than half of the job losses from the bureaucracy's permanent workforce had come from natural attrition – staff leaving voluntarily – rather than redundancies.

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"The government is committed to a sustainable public service that continues to deliver for the Australian people – a public service that provides viable front-line services and preserves the skills required to meet the government's priorities and deliver better value for each taxpayer dollar."

The number of retrenchments during 2013-14 was greater than the number of resignations for the first time since 1998-99.

Age retirements accounted for 17.3 per cent of all separations, a decrease in proportional terms from last year's 19.8 per cent. The number of terminations decreased from 182 (or 1.9 per cent) to 156 (1.4 per cent).

Natural attrition includes resignations and age retirements and excludes all other separation types, including retrenchments, invalidity retirement, deaths and termination of appointment.

The federal public service's presence in Canberra had reduced by 3687 in the year to June and was now 61,666.

Increasing across most of the public service was the length of service at a particular level.

The median length at level for all ongoing employees was 5.5 years at June 2014, up from 4.9 years at June 2013. Five years ago the median was 3.2 years for all ongoing employees.

For the senior executive ranks the median length at a certain level was 5.5 years at June 2014, up from 5 years in 2013.

For executive level employees it was 5.8 years, up from 5.2 years in 2013.

Five years ago the median length at level for SES and ELs was 3.6 years for both of these classification groups.

The representation of employees from a non-English speaking background rose from 15.8 per cent to 15.9 per cent, the proportion of indigenous Australians in the public service increased slightly from 2.26 per cent to 2.32 per cent.

Senator Abetz said federal public servants were also getting older with a higher representation of workers in the 35-44 and 45-54 age groups when compared to ABS labour force data.

Correction: An earlier version of this story wrongly said the figures came from the Australian Bureau of Statistics.